Mark Levin on ‘Ameritopia:’ ‘We Now Live in a Post-Constitutional Country’

In an interview with CNSNews.com about his new book—“Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America”—Mark R. Levin said he believes America has already largely become “a post-constitutional country.”

The book, released Monday, compares the Utopian and unworkable schemes laid out by political philosophers from Plato to Thomas Hobbes with the vision of natural law, God-given rights, and individual liberty that inspired the Founding Fathers when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
“Utopianism is not new,” Levin writes in “Ameritopia.” “It has been repackaged countless times—since Plato and before. It is as old as tyranny itself. In democracies, its practitioners legislate without end. In America, law is piled upon law in contravention and contradiction of the governing law—the Constitution.”
Levin’s verdict: Barack Obama and modern American liberals are firmly in the Utopian camp—pursuing a vision fundamentally at odds with limited government and human freedom.
“I believe to a great extent we now live in a post-constitutional country, where much of the Constitution is ignored or evaded,” Levin told CNSNews.com.
“What I want the readers to understand, what I want the public to understand is, this is not new and it’s going to destroy us,” said Levin. “It’s going to destroy us because it is an attack on the individual. It is an attack on the nature of human beings.”

Mark Levin: How are you, brother?Terry Jeffrey: I am doing great. Thanks for doing this. You know, each of your first three bestsellers were very different books. "Men in Black" talked about how the Supreme Court was ignoring or distorting the Constitution. "Rescuing Sprite" was a personal story about a dog you rescued, and "Liberty and Tyranny" talked about the way liberals in America today are threatening our freedom. This book is more a look at the comparison of the pathological political philosophy of the left, of those who might impose a tyrannical government, and the political philosophy that animated the Founding Fathers. Why did you write this book?Levin: Well, because "Liberty and Tyranny" laid out, in my view, the basics between conservatism and non-conservatism. And I try to keep these books under 300 pages, so people will actually read them, and so they're interesting, and so perhaps they may even influence somebody. And then I got to thinking: Well, it's not enough just to talk about the Founding Fathers. Where did the Founding Fathers get these ideas from? You know, they didn't just wake up one day and think about individual sovereignty and private property rights and natural law and God-given inalienable rights and so forth. So, I decided to dig.
Now, I had a sense for this, obviously. But I decided to dig further as well as address this concern that all believers in the American system have always had. I mean, including the greats--including Abraham Lincoln, and Joseph Story, and Ronald Reagan--which was this concern that tyranny threatens democracy. But what is this tyranny?
Other than just describing it at surface level, who's involved in it, where does this come from? And, frankly, I needed to figure that out for myself. So, that's why I decided to really dig deep and I think I found the answer, at least satisfying to me, which are these phony utopian notions of how man needs to be controlled and these model societies--going back probably before Plato--but I had to pick certain philosophers, who came up with certain model utopian ideas, to give examples of totalitarian regimes, which really brilliant men came up with, and to warn people today that we're headed on the same glide path.Jeffrey: You started out with Plato's Republic, and you talk about Thomas More and you talked about Hobbes and you end up talking about Karl Marx.

Karl Marx (Wikimedia Commons)

You point out in the book that even Plato in creating this utopia he had in mind, admitted that it wouldn't work, that it basically was in contradiction to even what he understood about human nature. But when you finally get around to Marx and Engels, there you have true believers. And as I was reading your book--and it had been a while since I looked at The Communist Manifesto--I'm thinking: Well, am I reading the Democratic Party platform here or am I reading The Communist Manifesto? You talk about The Communist Manifesto talked about the abolition of the family, talked about putting all children in public schools as a means of indoctrination, centralization of credit in the hands of the state, a heavy and progressive income tax, an abolition of the right of inheritance, and everything a struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Everything victims and the victimized, victimizers. Compare modern liberals in America today—Levin: It’s upsetting isn’t it?Jeffrey: --to this vision that Marx and Engels had in The Communist Manifesto?Levin: Well, you know it’s interesting. When Obama was running for office and saying these things--sort of saying them and sometimes accidentally blurting them out--I would say on my radio show he is speaking Marx here. This whole phony, historic material dialectic that he created of the two classes constantly fighting each other--the bourgeoisie and the proletariat--in other words, the people with money and land and so forth, the capitalists today, and the workers, the laborers, was phony from day one. And yet it attracted all the miscreants and the malcontents, anybody who’s unhappy with existing society and so forth. And you can hear it in Obama today with the class warfare propaganda.Jeffrey: Right--and Karl Marx really believed this though, right?Levin: Well, Karl Marx really believed it and Engels really believed it, and obviously their followers, Lenin and Trotsky and Mao and the others really believed it. But the problem is this--and what I try to get into in the book is--whether it is radical egalitarianism, like More in Utopia, whether it is this two classes fighting with each other, this phony straw man argument that Marx and Engels come up with, whether it’s Plato’s Republic with this so-called ideal city where they decide who’s going to be what where and who’s going to do what where, or whether it’s Hobbes’s all powerful sovereignty, top-down authoritarian-type government--in our own country, we are abandoning constitutional republicanism.
I believe to a great extent we now live in a post-constitutional country, where much of the Constitution is ignored or evaded. And the utopians today, these statists who are promoting bigger, centralized, concentrated government, more power to them. It’s not that they’re sitting there saying I’m going to take from Plato and Hobbes and everyone, but they are taking from Plato and Hobbes. And what I want the readers to understand, what I want the public to understand is, this is not new and it’s going to destroy us. It’s going to destroy us because it is an attack on the individual. It is an attack on the nature of human beings. It is an attack on the civil society.Jeffrey: Right, in your book, as I understand it, when you talk about Marx and Engels and The Communist Manifesto, they’re talking about a radical transformation of society—Levin: Correct.Jeffrey: --where they’re changing everything from the structure of the family, to how kids are taught from the time they’re born, there’s no private property, and to affect that transformation they have to trample individual liberty. It’s impossible to do it.

John Locke (Wikimedia Commons)

Levin: All of these societies are fantasies. They’re nightmares, but they’re fantasies. They’re somebody’s fantasy. They’re a philosopher’s fantasy. They’re people in power, it’s their fantasy. And what they all have in common is it is an attack on the nature of man, it is an attack on individual sovereignty, it is an attack on morality, it’s an attack on the civil society. And what I try to show in this book is this is a very, very serious mindset and it’s not the American mindset, and you can hear it in leftist politicians today--the way they talk, what they promote. And then I contrast with what I call Americanism, when we get to John Locke.
You see, John Locke was different than all those we just mentioned because the others were trying to figure out how to create this so-called perfect or more perfect society and impose it on people. John Locke said, ‘You know, what I want to try and figure out is what makes man tick? How does his mind work? How does he gather knowledge? Where does morality come from? Where do these things come from?’ You notice the difference? One makes assumptions: Humans need to be controlled, individuals acting in their own regard is problematic and should be shunned. Whereas Locke said: No, no, no, no. We should embrace individuality, that’s the nature of man. Read the rest and watch the interview here